I watched Star Trek: Into Darkness yesterday at the movies (Yeah… I go a lot lately. It’s just better to watch the new movies in your mother language- it’s hard for me to understand them in English…). Wow that was a good one! I really liked it- I was never a huge fan of the old Star Trek movies. My parents always watched them! But the Star Trek movies from J.J. Abrams are pretty good! Check this one out, if you have time!

I love coloring! Boy, as soon as I am over my current design project for work, I will start coloring again! I use photoshop and I learned coloring through watching LOTS of anmie and reading a book called “How to color for comics” (See picture below). This Naruto sketch is not from me. I got it off the internet. But I colored it myself!

Goong is a Korean drama about a princess story. This Drama is okay, I am not a fan of the main character’s attitude. Of course, it is always cool to have a character who is more cold-hearted. Otherwise the drama is not really fun. But we wanna see this person develop deep feelings, we want to see him change through love, right? As far as I remember, that is not that clear in this drama and the main actress gets hurts a lot and would be better off with the caring and alway present second lead cousin.

The story: A clumsly girl attends the same high school as the crown prince of Korea. He is a rather arrogant and cold-hearted personality who treats her like trash. But one day the girl finds out, that her Grand-father was an old friend of the King and promised his grand-daughter to the Crown Prince as a wife. In order to keep this promise the girl has to pull through and get married to the Crown Prince. She has to endure beauty treatments, manner training and of course, the marriage with the arrogant crown prince. But soon both of them get closer and develop feelings for each other…

So yeah, this Drama has its moments, defenately. But I am not a fan of guys who don’t change their bad temper. So on my personal scale this Drama has a 4/10! But check it out. Maybe you come to like this Korean soap!

Well, it’s not too hard to guess who I drew here! Please don’t ask his name… I have no clue!!!! He is one of the guys from the band infinite. This picture was randomly open on my pc and I drew one of the team members manga style!

Many of you have probably wondered, how Japanese differs from Korean, Chinese, Taiwanese and other Asian languages. Isn’t it all the same?

Of course: It’s not. Some things might be similar but all Asian languages have their own origins, sounds, words and alphabets. You might know the Kanjis, the Chinese characters. Those characters are pictures with different possible meanings and sounds.

This is an example of a Chinese Kanji: 愛

Chinese characters are imported into a lot of Asian languages and used for the same or sometimes for different meanings. But their sounded out differently in every language. I know that at least Korean and Japanese imported chinese characters.

Korean for example, has Hungul (It might be written different), an the main Korean alphabet. They write everything in their Korean alphabet! But they also have Kanjis for official documents, names etc.

Japanese has two Japanese alphabets and also the Chinese Kanjis. And here is where I want to show you some more.

Hiragana is the first Japanese alphabet and looks like this: ひらがな (This word says: Hiragana) . Hiragana is the main Japanese alphabet and is used for all words that have a Japanese origin.

Katakana is the second Japanese alphabet and looks like this: カタカナ (This word says: Katakana). You may recognize that the strokes of the Katakana characters are not at smooth as the Hiragana characters. Katakana is used for all words that have a foreign origin (like English). Japanese is a dying language. That means that there are not new words invented for the new things that come up with the media and lifestyle. So things like “Internet” and “Wireless LAN” are taken out of the English language and written in the Katakana Alphabet. Internet would be pronoused: Intanetto and written: インタネットin Katakana.

Hiragana and Katakana have the same sounds. Those sounds are always 2 letters, only one time, it is one letter.

The first letter you see in the cell is the romanji (the latin letter), the second one is the hiragana and the third one the katakana.

You can write every existing word in Japanese with these two alphabets. It’s pretty easy to read, when you have it down! But what are Chinese Kanjis for?

Kanjis are pictures and can be substitudes with much more meaning to Japanese words written in Hiragana. Kanjis can describe a complete thought instead of just one word. Kanjis are is shorter, too! Here is an easy example:

English: Myname is Erin.

Japanese romanji: Watashi no namae wa Erin desu.

Japanese hiragana and katakana:わたしのなまえはエリンです。

Japanese hiragana, katakana and Kanjis:私の名前はエリンです。

The Kanji for name here (名前) does not just mean name, but also first name. There is a lot more meaning behind the Kanjis than we as foreigners think! There are over 3000 Kanjis in the Japanese language. A normal Japanese person doesn’t know all of them.

I’m totally procrastinating here… I should really do some work! But I wanted to post this before I go back on concentrating! ;) Living in Japan, the J-Pop and K-Pop hype did not pass me without any effects. At first I thought K-pop (Korean pop) was stupid… But well, my friends listened to it and I really came to like it. As a European, those thin men with makeup and tight clothes look a bid hideous and girly at first. (Still does sometimes… the girly part at least) But You get used to that pretty quick. Their dancing seems a bit akward at first, when you watch it- it’s super poppy! But they are actually pretty good at what they are doing! I heard those pop band members practise 8hours a day. Props to that! And you defenately see it, too!

Well, this is infinite, one of my favorite bands. Their music is pretty cool. This is is one of my favorite songs from them: